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Claire’s favorite song?” he asked. “Before dinner, when you signed that CD for her.”
    “Because she’s a teenager,” Jenna said. As soon as he heard her voice he was glad he hadn’t dragged her close and kissed her, because she sounded completely unaffected by the lust he was drowning in.
    “ Alive was the first song I ever wrote,” she was saying now. “I was seventeen and it just poured out of me. Whenever I meet a teenager who likes the Red Mollies, that’s always their favorite song. It’s a teen thing, I guess.”
    “The words were beautiful,” he said, remembering. “But I don’t think I understood them.”
    “They’re not meant to be understood. They’re meant to be felt. I think that’s why teenagers love music so much, you know? It’s all about raw emotion. All the things they don’t have words for yet.”
    “I always had words for it.”
    She smiled a little. In the moonlight, her eyes were as dark as her hair. “All that science stuff, you mean?”
    “Yeah, all that science stuff.”
    “You said it was like an antidote, when you were Claire’s age. An antidote for what?”
    He thought about brushing the question off, but something about the quiet intimacy of the night, the intimacy of holding Jenna’s hand, made him answer honestly. “I didn’t exactly have a stable childhood. My mother drank a lot, and my dad was a professional gambler. It made for a pretty chaotic household. Science was a refuge from that. A part of my life that always made sense. Where there was order and logic and meaning.”
    Jenna didn’t say anything, but he could feel her understanding and empathy like a current flowing between them.
     “And then came adolescence and all those raging hormones. It seemed like everyone around me was at the mercy of their feelings and impulses. The kids at school, my own parents...and I knew I never wanted to be like that. I never wanted any impulse to have power over me. So I learned as much as I could about how the body works, how the mind works. I studied the chemistry of emotion. And the more I understood, the more confident I felt that my mind was stronger than any urge my body might have.” He sighed. “I don’t know why it doesn’t help Claire. To know what all those feelings are.”
    Jenna shifted a little on the bench, as if looking for a more comfortable position. It would have been a perfect opportunity for her to drop his hand, but she didn’t. He felt ridiculously pleased by that.
    “But chemistry and molecular diagrams don’t tell you what feelings are . Just what they’re made of.”
    For one brief moment, some part of him understood what she meant. Not linearly, the way he usually understood things, but in an intuitive flash. There’d been a moment like that earlier, when he’d read her song lyrics over Claire’s shoulder. A flash of understanding, there and then gone.
    And now it was gone again. “When you know what something’s made of, then you know what it is.”
    Jenna shook her head, but she was smiling at him. “I have to disagree with you on that. Science is all well and good, but it might be time for you to broaden your horizons a little. It wouldn’t kill you to try a few right brain things. Maybe even listen to a little music. It might help you understand Claire.”
     “It’s not like I hate music. I do listen to classical sometimes. And I really enjoyed singing those carols tonight. But I’ve never loved it, the way you do. And the music Claire likes is just alien to me.”
    Jenna shook her head again. “ Nothing human is alien to me . Some Roman playwright said that thousands of years ago, and it’s still true. If it’s human, you can understand it.”
    She slipped her hand out of his then, and set her feet on the ground. In another second she’d stand up, bringing the night to an end.
    “Wait.”
    She turned to look at him, and only then did he realize he’d spoken out loud.
    He’s spoken instinctively, wanting to keep